


How It Should Be

by maecharnian



Series: Evelyn [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: :(, Artist Steve Rogers, Electrokinesis, Gen, and this is what i do, electric manipulation, i saw this deleted scene in avengers where steve was on a train lookin real sad, im so fucking sad, it's finals week, platonic Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 07:01:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14732165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maecharnian/pseuds/maecharnian
Summary: Finding the middle ground between their past and their future, thinking about how their lives should be. (Takes place after "Budapest" chapter and before "The Crossroads" chapter in "Next to Me")





	How It Should Be

#### Nov. 15, 2014,1:30PM, New York City

Without warning, Evelyn threw the plate wrapped in newspaper at Steve, who still caught it gracefully, face warping in momentary panic, “Are you trying to break everything?”

She couldn’t help but laugh, “I’m only checking your reflexes.”

He snorted, “You won’t have anything left to take to California with the way that you’re throwing.”

She picked up an unwrapped glass and chucked it at him with all her strength, letting the past two weeks fuel the throw. Still, Steve caught it, though it shattered in his hand. Glass went everywhere, and he hissed, gripping his hand that was steadily trickling blood.

“Like throwing at a wall,” she said nonchalantly, turning away to find the towels. Once she found one in one of the boxes, she rushed to wrap his hand.

“Sorry,” Evelyn said, pressing on Steve’s bleeding hand after picking off the pieces of glass lodged into his palm.

“Don’t be,” he said, his tone meaning something deeper than what just happened.

“I think that’s enough packing for today,” she said, stepping away from Steve, turning away again, making her way to the couch. Turning away was easy.

“You don’t have to pack at all,” he tried again, but he was near surrender. He plopped down beside her, unwrapping the towel to reveal the small cuts already scabbed over.

Evelyn sighed, “You’re right. You can keep the plates. Hill should already have a stocked apartment for me.”

Steve scoffed with a smile, “You know what I mean.”

“I know,” she said. “But I can’t stay here. Everything was here. I don’t know how you can do it.”

Evelyn tried not to break. She’s been on the edge, lately. How could she not be?

Somehow, Steve knew what she was talking about. He patted her thigh before leaping up off the couch. He was in and out of his room in a moment, carrying a light backpack.

“Let’s take a walk. Maybe a ride, too.”

Evelyn locked the door to their shared apartment for perhaps the last time, following Steve into an innocent adventure, grief far from her mind.

This was how it should be.

* * *

“ _Sometimes I look at the change,_ ” Steve said in French under his baseball cap and sunglasses.

Evelyn stared out the train’s window, trying to see which sights speeding by were there when Steve was in 1945. It hurt her heart to think of him just sitting here, watching the future move around him.

He looked up at the window, then jerked.

“What,” Evelyn said, almost slipping out of her Faraday bracelet, her legs winding up in alertness. She looked out the window, expecting some alien space ship hovering over the water, firing off death, creatures coming down from a hole in the sky, smoking ruins.

But there was no threat. Steve was only grinning sheepishly as he zipped open his backpack and pulled out a sketchpad. After hastily flipping through it and settling on a sketch, he placed it in her hands.

“ _Look_ ,” Steve gently said, and held her hands up, tilting them slightly to the left.

His sketch was against the window, and the past converged with the present. The New York skyline was as Steve saw it and as Evelyn knew it, all in the same place.

“This is phenomenal,” Evelyn said, feeling sad for him again. “Is there more?”

“ _That’s the only one we can do from here,_ ” he said, stowing the sketchpad once the train moved out of the skyline’s sight and the drawing stopped syncing to reality.

“ _Most times I just pretend that I’m back there. That nothing has changed,_ ” Steve said, looking down at his wringing hands, then fiddled with the zippers on his backpack.

“Does it help?” she asked gingerly. She tried not to break either of them.

Steve tried to smile, but kept looking at his hands, “ _Not really._

Evelyn took his hand, and leaned against his shoulder, not saying anything, trying not to think, of anything, of everything but that other world, of everything but the things that never happened.

They just sat in silence for the remainder of the train ride, searching for some semblance of the past, trying to live in the future, finding the middle ground.

This was how it should be.

* * *

 

With her left arm wrapped around his right elbow, Steve guided her through Brooklyn. He talked the whole time, pointing things out. His old elementary school, his rundown apartment complex that looked almost the same back in 1945. There were just more homeless people now.

“ _You alright, Evelyn_?” Steve asked, still in French, after he showed her the set of towering office buildings that used to be Bucky Barnes’s old block.

He might have noticed her wrist rubbing up against his arm to feel the Faraday bracelet, positioning it so that she could slip it out any time.

“It’s just weird walking like this,” she said, weaving through people in suits and briefcases and wireless Blueteeth.

Steve nodded, seeming to know what she was talking about. But he let her talk.

“There’s no serious objective. No hostile waiting behind that corner. No need to be quiet apart from the reason of just wanting everything else to make its noise,” she pointed out the silence in between Steve’s landmarks.

“Just walking to walk. Doing civ things,” she said, holding up the sketchbook in her hand, recognizing the graphite captured scenery. This one wasn’t too different, Fort Greene Park hardly changed.

“ _Maybe it’s nice like this,_ ” Steve said. “ _Maybe it’s nice to not have an objective._ ”

“Maybe,” Evelyn nodded, pulling him forward into the park.

“Tell me about this park,” she requested once they were deeper into it.

“Well, those eggs weren’t there, but that’s about it,” he pointed out the egg-shaped boulders on pedestals that marked the Prison Ship Martyr Monument.

“I don’t think I would’ve understood that in French,” Evelyn said, smiling.

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ran up and down these stairs as a kid,” he grinned as they looked at the steps ahead of them.

“Ran?”

“More like huffed after Bucky,” he laughed now. No one turned their heads, and that was fine. “But I kept up.”

Evelyn snatched her arm away and sped up the steps, feeling the fire in her legs and her heart beating against her chest.

“Evelyn,” Steve called out after her, sighing. “You know I can beat you walking,” his voice was distant but close as it echoed on the steps and the square.

“Then walk,” she turned, but saw that Steve was already catching up to her. She dared to take off her Faraday bracelet and send a spark to where his foot would have landed if he didn’t swerve with a yelp.

“That’s cheating!” he called out as Evelyn stretched the gap between them.

“ _Being you is cheating_ ,” she yelled back in French as two more snaps of blue appeared in his path with a crackle.

Somehow, they reached the top at the same time, breathless, grins on their faces, laughter in their eyes. Evelyn gave him a gentle shove on the shoulder as they closed the distance they had created. Then they looked back down to where they started.

“You kept up,” Evelyn said, trying not to laugh.

Steve elbowed her, a chuckle escaping through his smiling mouth.

“Here,” he handed her the sketchpad and she held it up. Almost an exact image. The trees were bigger now, and there were the eggs. But this place was largely untouched. Sacred.

Then they sat at the top of the steps, watching people and their children and their dogs and their cameras come up and down the steps. Some asked if Evelyn or Steve could take a picture of them. But mostly, everyone left each other to their bubbles. Evelyn and Steve munched on the week-old granola bars from Steve’s bag. Steve sketched her and everything around them (with a pen!), and Evelyn watched Steve sketch her and everything around them.

This was how it should be.

But it wasn’t. Steve still had to speak in French and wear a baseball hat just in case someone thought him to be Captain America. He still had to draw his memories that could fade away and he wouldn’t know it. He still had to watch the people of the future with their clothes and their smartphones and their slang move around him. Evelyn, the only one that understood the other world with him, was still going to move to the other side of the country. She still fidgeted with the Faraday bracelet, ready to slip it off and destroy something. She was still ready to find a permanent solution for the Faraday bracelet, ready to give up everything she thought she was. She still felt that absence in her chest. There were still missions and the trauma that followed. They still couldn't find their own middle ground. 

“You never answered my question,” Evelyn said quietly after a period of satisfied silence.

“What?” his hand paused, pen lifting. He looked up, the momentary happiness disappearing from his face.

“How you do it,” she couldn’t look at him, but she did. She wanted to put the happiness back on his face, to imagine him in his own time. “How you live where everything was but isn’t anymore.”

Steve sighed, then went back to his sketchpad. Only, his face changed. The pain was more obvious, now.

“I moved to DC to get away from it all,” he said, then he stopped, looking up, looking at her and behind her and around her, trying to freeze the moment to capture it. “But I just took everything with me.”

“But now, you’re back,” she said, fiddling with her hands and her shoe laces.

“And I think it’s not so bad, now,” Steve sighed. “ _I’m not going back to 1945._ I know that. There’s no point in holding on to that hope _._ ”

Evelyn nodded, coaxing him to keep talking.

“All we can do now is start over _,_ ” he said, giving her a small smile. “New people, new places. But it doesn’t hurt to hold on to the old stuff. And a little of both.”

His smile widened as flipped the sketchbook to show her the ink manifestation of herself.

“God damn, Picasso,” she laughed, reaching over to look closer at the sketch. “You know, if this Schmaptain Schmamerica career falls through, art could be a fantastic plan B.”

“Maybe in another life,” he smiled. “Wanna guess which alleys I got beat up in?”

She handed him his sketchbook as she unwound her legs to stand up, “What, all of them?”

“I think I made up my mind. I won’t miss you after all,” Steve said, looking ahead, suppressing a smile.

“Aw, I was actually going to admit I’d miss you.”

They laughed as they walked down the steps together.

This was how it was. And for now, this was good.


End file.
